Trondheim shines at Nordic Startup Awards

‘Best Newcomer’ and ‘Best Founder’ awards went to the tech capital of Norway

Being the tech capital of Norway, it was expected Trondheim would do well at the recently held Nordic Startup Awards. Nordic Startup Awards is part of Global Startup Awards, a global competition to recognize the best talents of the global startup ecosystem. The Global Startup Awards provides an annual spotlight focus to web/tech startups in 25 countries across the globe. Each individual regional award places a heavy focus on unearthing and reward the very best from within their respective ecosystems & connecting each of the countries to create a stronger united brand.

The awards stand to represent the entire startup and tech community - from the startups themselves, through to the people behind them, and the organisations that work alongside these visionaries to make the great things possible.

This year, the Norwegian finale was held in Tromsø, hosted by FLOW Norway and Technoport. The competition was fierce – there were many high quality candidates from all over the country nominated in 13 different categories. Trondheim-based candidates took home two awards – Best Newcomer award went to Flowmotion Technologies, and Best Founder award went to Zedge’s CEO, Tom Arnøy.

Flowmotion Technologies has won SpareBank 1 SMN Startstøtte award of 250 000 NOK at last year’s Innovator for being Norway’s best student startup so the team is already aware that their idea and product carries much promise. They also made a big splash on the international scene this year by raising over 10 million NOK on Kickstarter, while their initial goal was set to only 240 000 NOK.

Best Founder award went to Tom Arnøy who is the founder of Zedge, a Trondheim-based tech company that was just last year listed on the New York Stock Exchange at a value of 500 million NOK. Zedge is a content platform for ringtones, wallpapers, icons for smartphones and tables. It has been downloaded more than 200 000 000 times, and has about 30 million monthly active users. Zedge has been consistently ranked as one of the top 25 apps in Google Store in USA for the past six years.

This concludes Nordic Startup Awards 2017, and are we are looking forward to what this and the next year will bring to Trondheim's entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem.